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Super Ape... or Feral Human?

dreeness

Gone But Not Forgotten
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There are reports of some things, things which could be well described as "super apes", giant simian-faced critters, covered in thick ape-ish fur, 7 to 8 feet tall, massive bipedal super-gorilla type-things. Reports of bigfoot/sasquatch creatures seem to fall into this category. Bipedal and enormous, but essentially just a kind of great big "super-ape".

But then there are reports of other creatures, creatures which seem more like "wild men". Stories from the Old World, including stories from antiquity and folklore etc. Creatures which are sometimes depicted in heraldry and old woodcut illustrations, and carvings and things like that. Creatures which are approximately human in form, but at the same time are beastly and utterly savage in nature. Feral humans, humans somehow "gone wrong", humans that exist without the benefits of human "culture", in the very broad sense of the word. Beings with little or no language skills, no means of communicating or even developing complex information, basically humans existing at the level of a bunch of chimps, or a pack of wolves. Instinctive, animalistic creatures. Humans without "humanity", for lack of a better word.
There are rare reports of feral human children, reports which are profoundly disturbing, and terribly tragic.

But what if there were somewhere at some time an isolated population of such creatures, living far beyond the reach of civilization, such beings could well be the stuff of legend, and the stuff of nightmares.
 
As well as being a handy symbol to underline the difference between the right sort of people who share our sets of norms and values, and those uncouth savage bastards who don't.
 
An account from the 13th century:

A wild man is described in Konungs skuggsjá (Speculum Regale or "the King's Mirror"), written in Norway around 1250:

It once happened in that country (and this seems indeed strange) that a living creature was caught in the forest as to which no one could say definitely whether it was a man or some other animal; for no one could get a word from it or be sure that it understood human speech. It had the human shape, however, in every detail, both as to hands and face and feet; but the entire body was covered with hair as the beasts are, and down the back it had a long coarse mane like that of a horse, which fell to both sides and trailed along the ground when the creature stooped in walking.
 
Were the people of Tierra del Fuego not meant to be very lacking in culture, as well as clothes?
 
They certainly were lacking in culture, and clothes, but they had complicated language (probably more so than English) and were clever hunters, as well as keeping dogs.
 
The people of Tierra Del Feugo didn't wear clothes? They must have had to ship in a new population every spring.
 
oldrover said:
The people of Tierra Del Feugo didn't wear clothes? They must have had to ship in a new population every spring.
No! Tierra del Fuego means Land of Fire. When it got chilly (see what I did there? ;) ) they just huddled around a convenient volcano! :D
 
That is part of the weird thing about them. They seemed to have been quite capable of staying warm, without clothes on. It's been said if missionairies let them sit near their campfires, the fuegans would start sweating. Perhaps their mitochondria produced extra heat, similar to what people in Siberia are meant to have. The missionairies also gave them clothes, but this ended up being the death of the fuegans.
 
I'd like to learn a bit more about this, at the moment the idea sounds bloody mad to me. Yet I'm sure I recall a reference to two children who were taken to London from the area to be 'civilised' throwing off their clothes when they were finally taken back and returning to their savage ways.

Can anyone recommend some references?
 
The Yaghans certainly did not wear clothing, but they were acclimatised to such a life.

This is a place where glaciers come right down to the sea, in spite of the forests (fuegean trees are as tough as the people, and have since been planted in places no other trees can grow)

Didn't NASA do acclimatisation experiments with ordinary American households?
 
That is fascinating. They had become so adapted to the cold, they didn't need clothes...just wow.
 
oldrover said:
I'd like to learn a bit more about this, at the moment the idea sounds bloody mad to me. Yet I'm sure I recall a reference to two children who were taken to London from the area to be 'civilised' throwing off their clothes when they were finally taken back and returning to their savage ways.

Can anyone recommend some references?

It was in the film about Charles Darwin a few years ago.
 
The one with Paul Bettany in it? Couldn't get through it I'm afraid. I can't stand Darwin for some reason. It's not that I'm some religious lunatic or anything, I admire his work it's just that the thought of him as some morbid Victorian hypochondriac makes my skin crawl.
 
Here's an old photo from 1899 where the indians of Tierra del Fuego definetly wear clothes:

ona-indians-from-tierra-del-fuego.jpg


Perhaps because it is in the winter?
 
Those are Ona (Inland guanaco hunting folk)

They are not Yaghans. (costal seal and otter hunting folk)

Don't get the two mixed up or you will get an arrow in you.

And yes, they are wearing clothes, or merely a big skin robe wrapped around them, Patagonian fashion, they also had moccasins.

still pretty chilly.
 
That photo is from the annual Tierra del Fuego fashion show.

I was reading a book recently, where someone talked about how the aboriginal australians can survive chilly nights because they redirect all their bloodflow to the torso. Which means the rest of them can get quite cold without problems. It might well be wrong though.
 
On one of our trips in the outback a local guide told us that some years ago a group of aboriginals had slept the night in a freezer truck, got up the next morning and just shook the frost out of their hair.
I have no idea if it was true but can't some Tibetan monks survive in freezing conditions with very little clothing?
 
Isis177 said:
.. I have no idea if it was true but can't some Tibetan monks survive in freezing conditions with very little clothing?
Yes - it's called "tumo". I've seen this demonstrated at an exhibition featuring authentic Shaolin monks: one, sat in the lotus position, dried out cotton sheets soaked in iced water that were then wrapped around him - with a cold air fan trained on him as well - within about 30 minutes with nary a shiver.

They did lots of other qi stuff too, much of it eye-watering and/or mind-boggling.
 
stuneville said:
Isis177 said:
.. I have no idea if it was true but can't some Tibetan monks survive in freezing conditions with very little clothing?
Yes - it's called "tumo". I've seen this demonstrated at an exhibition featuring authentic Shaolin monks: one, sat in the lotus position, dried out cotton sheets soaked in iced water that were then wrapped around him - with a cold air fan trained on him as well - within about 30 minutes with nary a shiver.

They did lots of other qi stuff too, much of it eye-watering and/or mind-boggling.

You've seen it actually demonstrated? :shock:
I'd read about it, but didn't know for sure if it was truly possible.
 
Mythopoeika said:
You've seen it actually demonstrated? :shock:
I'd read about it, but didn't know for sure if it was truly possible.
Oh yeah. The audience was invited to feel the water, to watch closely - it was all genuine. The monk was bare-chested. He was wound in the soaking sheet, the fan was switched on, and he just appeared to meditate. Before very long you could see dry patches appear on the material (and not just from the fan-ward direction, but all round) and as I said within half an hour or so it was dry and apparently warm to the touch, and stiff like something dried on a radiator.

As I said they did other stuff - like bending bars by holding each end between two monks' Adam's Apples who then walked toward one another, holding hugely contorted physical positions for minutes on end, etc, as well as more conventional Kung Fu stuff.

This was about twenty years ago, part of the Mind, Body and Spirit expo that was an annual thing in Bristol until a few years ago. Apparently the Shaolin do still tour.

edit - dug around a bit - it's "tummo" apparently - here's a report of a monk performing the sheet routine under the supervision of Harvard University professor of medicine.
 
I was reading a book recently, where someone talked about how the aboriginal australians can survive chilly nights

I saw a documentary years ago which suggested that the Australian Aboriginals and a hypothetical pre-Indian population may have been the same people, and that the Fuegans were the last survivors of the original inhabitants of the Americas. Interesting then that both groups apparently have an unusual tolerance to cold.
 
I saw that too, I only caught the end though. I seem to recall they identified one individual, a woman I think, as being the last of this group. They were saying that they were evidence of a very ancient seafaring culture.

I'm not sure what's special about Australian Aboriginals and cold nights though.
 
I saw that too, I only caught the end though. I seem to recall they identified one individual, a woman I think, as being the last of this group.

Yes, and I think DNA evidence supported the theory. I think there had been a small group left but they were killed off with measles in the 1920s or thereabouts. It's a shame I can't remember what the documentary was called.

I'm not sure what's special about Australian Aboriginals and cold nights though.

All I can think is the extremes of temperature in the Australia desert - although most of the Aboriginal population pre-European settlement lived very sensibly in the temperate regions of the continent.
 
Yes that's the one, no idea what it was called or what channel it was on other than it was a terrestrial one.

The thing is desert temperatures are the same all over the tropics at night, it'd be just as bad for any hunter gatherer society.

This business of the Fuegan's ability to tolerate extreme cold is very interesting.
 
Quake42 said:
I'm not sure what's special about Australian Aboriginals and cold nights though.

All I can think is the extremes of temperature in the Australia desert - although most of the Aboriginal population pre-European settlement lived very sensibly in the temperate regions of the continent.

Interestingly, those in the temperate areas tended to don skins of possum, kangaroo and koala. Those more centrally located made and continue to make use of of a combination of fire and dogs. Strip fires either side of the sleeper were stoked from time to time overnight, and dingoes huddled for mutual warmth (ever heard the phrase "three dog night"?). I tried the strip fire method one night in a sandy creekbed in the Flinders Ranges but felt so nervous about rolling in that I didn't get much sleep anyway. It did stave off the cold air pretty well, however.

Dingoes and Indigenous Culture
 
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